TikTok’s built-in editor is great, but lacks certain features. Features that can help exercise your creativity and make your video go viral.
So let’s take a look at the best TikTok editors, their pros and cons, and their prices so you can make the right choice in selecting the best one.
Why you should use a TikTok maker for your TikTok videos?
In some ways, TikTok isn't as versatile as other editing software.
On TikTok, you cannot crop 1:1 or 16:9 videos to TikTok’s favored aspect ratio 3:4. TikTok’s app also doesn’t let you remove redundant objects from your recording. In addition, it is incapable of removing shakiness from videos.
Some of the built-in features of TikTok aren’t as user-friendly as some of the other editors. For example, you can’t add multiple videos and adjust video length after applying filters, text, and other edits.
TikTok is also notorious for making resolutions higher than 1080p be blurred, thanks to its video compression algorithm.
So what video maker should you be using for your TikTok videos? Read on for the 10 best TikTok makers you should try.
10 Best TikTok video makers and editing apps for 2023
1. Adobe Rush
Compatibility: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS
Pricing: $9.99/month
Made by Adobe, a company best known for its video editing products, Rush makes editing TikTok videos a breeze. It’s less complex than Premiere Pro, and anyone can use this app.
The editing app comes with a snappy clipper for creating social media-worthy videos. You can easily adjust the video’s aspect ratio, apply color grading effects, and use the in-app motion graphics templates to spice your footage up.
The app displays three to four audio tracks simultaneously, which makes adding sound and music effortless. Additionally, you can easily create engaging titles, as the app allows you to change their style, motion, location, and duration.
The app is free to use; however, we suggest you take up a subscription to access extra editing features and additional cloud storage. Also, the free version only allows you to export three files per day.
Pros
Simple Adobe app for a beginner
Cross-platform
Great tools for making short videos
Cons
Needs a Creative Cloud subscription
Can only export three files per day with the free version
2. CapCut
Compatibility: Android, iOS
Pricing: Free
This one comes from Bytedance, the company that made TikTok. So obviously, this app is a must-add app to our list. But what really makes this a no-brainer app to use is that it’s completely free, no strings attached.
Unlike Adobe Rush, CapCut is only available on Android and iOS. It has features like speed changes, stickers, filters, background music, auto-captioning, and plenty of others that make your videos TikTok-ready.
The app also helps you remove background colors for a green screen effect, so you can add another video or picture later.
Unfortunately, if you’re looking for advanced editing options, CapCut, well, doesn’t make the ‘cut’. The other apps on this list have better features. However, it’s a free editor, and an excellent one at that, especially for beginners.
Pros
Free to use
Great selection of filters
Great music library
Cons
15-minute video length only
Features are basic
3. InShot
Compatibility: Android, iOS
Pricing: $3.99/month, $14.99/year or $34.99 lifetime
InShot is another popular editor. It makes it easy to resize a video to suit any social media platform (like TikTok). Once resized, you can share the video to any social media platform from inside the app.
It includes filters, font styles, animation effects, and transitions. With it you can trim, split, merge and delete clips.
Other cool features include the ability to extract music from other videos and add it to your own video.
However, if you’re looking for advanced editing, avoid the free version — it comes with a watermark and lacks some editing capabilities.
Pricing: $4.99/month for the Premium version, $9.99 for the Professional version, and $34.99 for the business version
Magisto is by Vimeo, the popular video hosting platform. Like InShot, there’s a free and a paid version of the program, but the paid version offers more editing options. The latter option has three tiers — Premium, Professional, and Business.
For editing videos, the Premium version is enough. The Professional tier, however, includes access to millions of video clips and photos from iStock.
Editing on Magisto is straightforward — you can change the aspect ratio and style of the project (Memories, Wow, Minimalistic & Fun). You can also select the background music, which Magisto has a huge selection of.
But here’s the best part: Magisto uses an AI to do all the heavy-lifting video editing.
Of course, an AI can’t beat human creativity, so if you feel like it hasn’t done the job, you can edit your videos manually. You can add more footage, move clips around, trim clips, and add various other effects.
Whether you want the AI to do the job, or do it yourself, Magisto beginner-friendly interface helps make videos in minutes.
Pros
3 million + stock video clips and 25 million photos with iStock
AI Editor helps make videos quickly.
Cons
Limited features in the free version
Paid version is expensive
5. Funimate
Compatibility: Android, iOS
Pricing: $2.99/week. Comes with a 7-day free trial
Funimate is popular with TikTok users who make 60-second videos. The app is also particularly known for its plethora of emojis, stickers, and video effects.
It offers the usual video editing features, such as merging, cropping, and trimming. Other tools include AI that enhances the look of the video as well as a text-to-video feature.
Although the free version is excellent, it lacks the filters and animations of the pro version.
Pros
100+ advanced video effects, stickers, and emojis.
Pricing: $11.99/year. Comes with a 7-day free trial
Vizmato lets you add live special effects and music when recording a video.
The app has video themes like HipHop, Chaplin, Sci-Fi, and Vintage, and special effects like Beats, Mirror, and Fluidic that make videos engaging.
Other neat tools include the ability to modulate your voice with options like baby, chipmunk, ghost, and more. You also get access to the Viztunes library, which has over 140 free music tracks.
If you choose the free version, all your edited videos will have a watermark. So if you want to avoid this, the paid option is the only way to go.
Pros
Video recording with live effects
Voice changer and lip-syncing options
Great selection of themes and visual effects
Cons
The free version comes with watermarks and ads
7. iMovie
Compatibility: iOS, macOS
Pricing: Free
iMovie makes it easy for fans of Apple to edit videos without fancy editing skills.
The interface is clean and allows you to split, trim, and change the speed of videos easily. The software also has tools for cropping footage and creating PIP (picture in picture). It also makes scrubbing through a project easy — you just have to drag your finger across the screen.
Additionally, iMovie has a large library of audio effects and music which you can use to enrich your videos.
Splice is a powerful yet intuitive video editor made by the makers of GoPro. It’s perfect for editing both long-form and short-form videos. It's mainly known for its ability to create smooth transitions like crossfade, fade to black, blur, swipe across, and more.
The app also has a fantastic selection of filters and text overlays that help make your videos more attractive.
Splice comes with multi-track audio editing, which helps you create soundtracks easily. Furthermore, its audio library offers a wide selection of music tracks (16 genres, with 9-26 tracks in each genre) and sound effects.
While the app is free, some tools are locked behind a paywall. And both versions don’t let you share videos straight to TikTok.
Pros
Excellent audio editing tools
Easy to trim, split clips, add filters, transitions, and text
Cons
Limited audio and video editing capabilities in the free version
9. Zoomerang
Compatibility: Android, iOS
Pricing: $29.99/year or $4.99/week
Zoomerang is beginner friendly as it comes with step-by-step tutorials that show you how to recreate popular TikTok trends.
The app has plenty of filters, visual effects, music, and more. Once you’re done editing the video, you can connect your TikTok (or Instagram & Snapchat) account to the app for easy sharing.
The free version once again lacks advanced editing tools, so go for a subscription to access all the app’s features.
Pricing: $15/month for the Standard version, $24/month for the Pro version
Riverside.fm makes creating video highlights and sharing them on TikTok a breeze.
You can easily highlight TikTok-worthy sections of a video using Riverside’s Clips feature, either live or in post-production. For more details on how to do this, we’ll cover this fully later on. The process is intuitive, and you’ll have content ready for TikTok in no time. Besides creating clips, you can also use Riverside’s Editor to customize backgrounds and layouts, fine-tune your audio, and polish your video.
If you want to save time in post-production, you can also use Riverside’s Media Board, a feature that allows you to add video intros, outros, jingles, and theme music live.
Riverside.fm offers both a free and a paid version. While the free version is great, if you want higher-resolution recordings without watermarks, you might want to upgrade to the paid version.
Pros
Fantastic for creating clips from long-form videos
How to make a video with TikTok’s built-in video editor
Step 1: Open your TikTok video creator
Open the app and press the + icon at the bottom of the screen. Now you’re ready to start creating your TikTok video.
Step 2: Change settings and hit record
Before you start recording, play around with various settings and filters. Also, choose the length of the video.
Now hit the red Record button.
If you plan to stitch multiple videos together, you’ll have to record several clips.
Step 3: Clip your video
Once the recording is done, click ‘Adjust clips’. Here, move the red lines on either side of the video to add the start and stop points. You can also split a video in two by using the white line that runs down the video bar.
Step 3: Add effects
Select a trending sound or search by clicking on the ‘Add sound’ tab at the top of the screen.
Click on ‘Effects’ to add visual effects like stickers, transitions, and more to the video.
Click on ‘Text’ on the top right-hand side, and choose from a variety of colors and fonts. You can also choose when the text appears on the video and the duration.
Once everything is ready, click ‘Next’.
Step 4: Post your TikTok video!
Fill in the description, tag people, and then click Post to get your TikTok video live!
Tips on how to edit TikTok videos
Let’s look at some of the most popular ways to edit your TikTok videos so you can create viral-ready videos immediately.
Add loops to your videos
When people watch your video more than once, it signals to TikTok's algorithm that your content is engaging. And looping is one way to make your viewers watch your video multiple times.
To understand what looping is and how to do it, check out the below video.
For effective looping, match the ending of the video to the beginning in a seamless way to keep your viewers engaged.
Change the recording speed
Play around with different recording speeds to make your videos more interesting and cinematic. It also lets you add more video content into a short recording.
To change speeds, click the Speed icon and choose your preferred option.
Cut videos
Longer videos aren’t better on TikTok. According to Wired, the most watched videos are 21 to 34 seconds long.
So while you should be taking as much footage as possible, only leave the most interesting bits to maximize engagement and climb the algorithm.
Use Transitions
Transitions are widely used in TikTok, so experiment with different ones in your videos. Also, keep in mind that the level of skill required for different transitions varies.
However, a simple beginner transition is the finger snap — and it’s widely used by TikTokers to grab attention. An example is below.
Use trending filters, effects, and songs
Use effects, filters, sounds, and songs in your videos. Popular effects include green screen, slow motion, time warp effect, and more.
You can also increase the likelihood of your video going viral by using trending songs.
You can make TikTok videos on Riverside easily with just a few steps. Watch the video below or read on to learn how:
Step 1: Go to the Riverside.fm dashboard and click on New Studio. Add the Studio Name, and set the Recording Type to Audio & Video.
Step 2: In the next page, enter your name and click on Join Studio.
Step 3: Click on Record in the following page. Once the recording starts, you can press Mark Clip or press M on the keyboard to highlight moments in highlight key moments to use for your Clips in real-time.
Step 4: After you’ve finished recording, go to Studio, and click on the video you just recorded.
Step 5: Click Create Clip under theClipssection. Next, choose from the three aspect ratio options – Story, Post, or Full-length. For TikTok, we recommend Story.
You’ll now get access to the Timeline, where you can clip the video.
Step 6: Once done, choose the background and logo, and then click Export.
Then click Back to dashboard. Wait for a few minutes for the exporting to complete.
And that’s it! Your TikTok video is ready to publish.
Conclusion
TikTok’s in-built video editor is fantastic; in many cases, you don’t even need to download a third-party editor. However, each of the editors we’ve suggested in this article has something new to contribute, and restricting yourself to only TikTok’s editor will only serve to restrict your creativity.
In any case, most editors come with a free version, so you can try them risk-free before committing to any one of them.
Repurpose content into short clips suitable for social media. Multi-layout Clips is the best way to easily share clips everywhere without losing quality.
Riverside.fm is an audio-video tool that collapses the pod/broadcast studio experience into your browser. The service captures lossless audio and up to 4K video locally, syncs it, and uploads as you go.
Riverside.fm is an audio-video tool that collapses the pod/broadcast studio experience into your browser. The service captures lossless audio and up to 4K video locally, syncs it, and uploads as you go.
Riverside.fm is an audio-video tool that collapses the pod/broadcast studio experience into your browser. The service captures lossless audio and up to 4K video locally, syncs it, and uploads as you go.
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